Towards balanced low-carbon development: Driver and complex network of urban-rural energy-carbon performance gap in China

While extensive studies focused on income inequality between the urban and rural, the corresponding energy-carbon performance (ECP) gap which describes differences in energy consumption and CO2 emission simultaneously, is ignored to a large extent for an emerging economy in particular. This could hinder formulating policy towards energy saving and emission reduction in the residential sector as well as public welfare improvement. To fill the gap above, the study explored the source and spatial pattern of urban–rural ECP gap in 30 China’s provinces over 2005–2019, by developing income-based meta-frontier decomposition analysis and social network analysis. We found that ECP in the urban areas were generally greater than that in the rural areas, partly supporting energy consumption ladder theory in China. Urban-rural ECP gaps in most provinces were becoming increasingly obvious. The efficiency loss effect and the innovation effect were important causes of widening the urban–rural ECP gap while the technological progress of energy-carbon use in various regions was unbalanced. Further, the original hierarchical ECP gap spatial correlation structure has been improved while provinces exhibited significant heterogeneity. We suggest that policymakers can focus on narrowing the urban–rural ECP gap by vigorously developing the digital economy, promoting urban–rural integration and energy efficiency with advanced technology.